


I Cleanse The Mirror

by takadainmate



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2010-09-28
Packaged: 2020-12-16 22:02:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21043481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takadainmate/pseuds/takadainmate
Summary: Mid-summer in Colorado and it's been snowing for three weeks. Dean and Sam's investigation turns to survival as they are hunted by an ancient, malevolent creature who seeks nothing other than to take their lives. Especially Cas's.Set somewhere post the end of season 5. No spoilers for season 6.Pre-Dean/CasEdited for the first time October 2019 - for old times sake and because I never had the time when it was written.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of a fic exchange at [deancastiel](https://deancastiel.livejournal.com/)
> 
> I took three of the five prompts. Firstly, wanting to see Sam and Cas friendship, with Cas saving Sam. Also, your request for horror, with a casefic type set-up. And finally, your request for Castiel not understanding humans. That one I interpreted... liberally.

Dean expects it to be bad. How could it not be? It's been snowing on and off for three weeks, the locals tell him, and Dean can believe it. The snow is piled high on the sidewalks, houses half-buried. Electricity supplies and telephone connections are sketchy, the weight of snow felling power lines and clogging up roads. But Dean knows the area gets heavy snowfall every winter. This town should be able to take it.

The townsfolk say they weren't prepared. Dean thinks they're deluding themselves. When it comes to shit that shouldn't be happening, finding reasons; making excuses; that;s not an uncommon response. He's done it himself enough times.

In one of the local bars, huddled around the fire, when it's late and there's been a whole lot of beer, people talk.

"They're dead," one guy tells them in a low voice. "They're not coming back."

Sam leans forward conspiratorially. He's good at this kind of thing, so Dean sits back, takes a pull from his beer and lets his brother do his work. "Why'd you say that?" Sam asks.

"I've seen 'em." His eyes are glassy and afraid, and Dean thinks, _Ghosts_.

"Where?" Sam asks, and the guy looks out the window and up, towards the mountains to the north of town. The sun has long since set but Dean can still see them there; blue-tinged and sharp-looking and really fucking _steep_.

***

They're already high up, having come a long way on buried paths they keep losing track of, when Cas finally shows up. Dean's feet are starting to feel like dead weights. His fingers ache, even hidden away in thick gloves. He's fairly sure he's going blind from the constant glare from the white, endless snow fields. From the constant haze of snowfall. It's getting hard to tell where the sky meets the snow. It's getting hard to tell what's real and what's not.

Dean keeps Sam close, afraid to lose him in what's turning into a full-out blizzard.

And then, there's a tan trench coat decorating the blankness of the world, and Cas is walking easily alongside them despite the way his feet fall into thick snow with every step. The damn angel makes it look effortless. Dean feels cold just looking at Cas's bare hands. At the way snow catches in his hair, and falls on the skin of his face, melting there.

"You're late." Dean's voice is rough, miserable from the hours of trekking. He's thirsty, he realises. All this damn snow and he's _thirsty_.

"I joined you as quickly as I could," Cas replies, somehow sounding the same as ever. He doesn't even need to shout over the noise of the wind, which howls past Dean's ears and makes him shiver and pull his hat down further over his head. Dean can hear him just fine.

"Not very quickly," Dean gripes, because Sam called Cas four days ago and in that time some weather guy and his guide had joined the ranks of the missing. "This isn't just some regular hunt, Cas."

"Dean-" Sam warns, his voice muffled by the way his thick jacket is pulled up to his nose. Dean knows he's being an ass. He does. But he's tired and he's seen shit today he wishes he hadn't and he's fucking _cold_.

Dean gets it, too. He gets that Cas has _more important_ shit to do up in Heaven or whatever, and that he's not Dean's personal angel on-call, but what's happening here is something big. This is summer in Colorado, with four feet of snow and minus fifteen degree temperatures. Dean doesn't know what can cause shit like that other than something really damned powerful.

"I know." Castiel has the grace to look regretful. He doesn't make any excuses, and he doesn't seem inclined to say any more, so Dean lets it go.

"We’ve got another hour’s walk until we get to the hunting lodge,” Dean tells him instead, wiping his hand with his face. The rough material of his glove scrapes painfully against his skin where its been exposed for too long. It's getting late, the sun starting to set; a lot later than Dean would’ve liked to be out in a snowstorm. Dean had never expected it to take him and Sam so long to make it to the lodge. There'd been snow, back in the town, but nothing like this.

Up here, deep in the mountains above the town of Estes Park, whatever is causing the freaky weather and the disappearances feels closer, more present, like at any second something is going to come out of the snowdrifts and kill them. Every step they take is heavier, more difficult, fighting against them.

And they've seen things; pale figures lingering in their peripheral vision but never quite there. They make no sound, and Dean's yet to see any of them move, but they're there. Watching. From the way Sam's head swivels to the side, following shapes in the snow, Dean knows his brother sees them too. It's reassuring. It's not just his imagination. It's not some trick of the light. Dean is not going crazy.

By silent agreement Sam and Dean have kept to the path, when they can find it, and tried to ignore the figures, knowing that it would be both useless and dangerous to try and get a good look at them.

Ghosts, Dean thinks. Maybe the missing townsfolk.

As soon as Cas appears the figures are gone, fizzle out like wisps from a candle, taking with them some of the creepiness and uneasiness of the past few hours, climbing and climbing and being followed and not seeing much of anything but shadows and haze. They haven't found any evidence of what's become of the missing people. The further they go though, the more Dean realises that anything they might've found would've long since been buried under snow. Maybe that's it. This is all just the ghosts of dead hikers, caught out by the crazy storms, lost and frozen. The way Dean's teeth chatter and his muscles burn he could easily believe it.

Except Dean's certain there's more to this than the ghosts of the dead. His instincts that tell him something bad is going on here.

"There were ghosts, before you came," Dean says, and Cas turns his gaze on Dean and almost looks like a ghost himself, his face colourless, and his eyes weirdly glassy and distant in the dimmed daylight.

Watching Cas stride alongside them, not showing any sign of being at all concerned with the heavy snowfall, or the driving wind, Dean thinks for the first time ever that he wouldn't mind some of those freaky angel powers for himself.

Cas looks away to the path ahead. Snow on snow. "Yes," he agrees.

"What do you think's going on here?" Sam asks, leaning over so they can hear him over the wind. Sam wraps his arms around himself, and Dean can see he's shivering underneath his heavy coat.

Cas doesn't answer for a long while, looking around slowly, purposefully, and Dean wonders what he sees.

Finally, he answers, "Something old."

Dean's going to ask for more, because that is not even slightly useful. And if he's talking at least he's not thinking about the biting cold and the pain in his hands and the muscles of his legs. But then Sam stumbles, going to his knees. The snow is so deep now it pretty much buries Sam's legs, his arms up to his elbows.

"Fuck." Sam is breathing hard, frowning, mouth set in a grimace. He's exhausted. Dean can relate.

Hooking an arm under Sam's elbow Dean hoists him up onto his feet because sitting around in several feet of snow is not going to do him any good. Against his side, Dean can feel how badly Sam is shaking and he doesn't like it at all.

He looks to Cas.

"I'll take you to the lodge," Cas says, and Dean's ridiculously glad that Cas isn't so oblivious he can't tell when humans have reached their limit. He wonders just how pathetic and wet and exhausted they must look to Cas. But whatever, Dean's not going to complain, because as much as he hates travel by angel, he hates being dead more.

There's relief in Sam's eyes. He relaxes into Dean's hold as he turns to Cas. "God, yes, please," Sam says. Then, realising what he's just said adds, "Um. Thanks."

They might not see that much of Cas anymore, but when he raises an eyebrow at Sam and it looks like amusement, Dean thinks that maybe Cas understands a lot more about messy human behaviour than Dean gives him credit for.

Then Cas extends his hands towards them, and Dean feels the familiar discomfort of angel transportation, and thinks that Cas could've at least remembered to warn them first.

***

The hunting lodge is about as cold and crappy as Dean expected, but it has walls and a roof so Dean's not going to bitch about it. His face prickles uncomfortably now that it's out of the wind. He can feel ice-cold water against his skin that makes him shiver. It's dark in the twilight, and Dean's hand automatically goes to the knife in his pocket.

"Cas," he hisses, his eyes trying to scan the room in the dim light, listening for any sounds of movement. It's difficult with his ears still ringing, or maybe more like buzzing. Static. Sam is at his back, tense and wary too. Dean can just about make out a table and chairs in the corner; the outline of a dirty-looking kitchenette; a cleaned-out fireplace with two ragged old armchairs in front of it. It's bare, smells of damp and decay, and feels a long time abandoned. "There could be anything in here," Dean says, annoyed because they've been dumped into a situation beyond their control, blind, and Cas doesn't look even vaguely concerned.

"I wouldn't have brought you to a place where there was any immediate danger," Cas tells him, and he sounds confused, like how could Dean even think he'd do something so reckless. It's a fair point, but his instincts still say something is up with this place. Like there are more ghosts, images of dead things, malicious things, just around the corner. It's that feeling Dean gets in those places where someone died a violent, early death. There's no smell of human remains though, nothing to indicate anyone's been there recently, just the old, musty smell of wet rags and stale air.

"You're sure?" Dean asks, because he can't shake the feeling that something is _watching_.

He waits for his eyes to become accustomed to the poor light and is glad when he can see Sam and Cas's faces.

Sam shifts his weight from one foot to another. He could just be trying to get his feet warm, or he could be as uncomfortable standing in this room as Dean is. His brother shoots him a look like he doesn't believe there's nothing here either.

Cas's eyes wander over the undecorated walls and the bare, wood floor. He frowns. "There is nothing here now."

"But there was?" Sam guesses.

"There was."

"That same old thing from before?" Dean questions.

Cas is uncomfortable too, on edge, and that can't be any kind of good. Even if he's sure there's nothing here, Dean doesn't feel like he'll be able to relax at all in this place.

There's a door on the other side of the room, and Dean moves towards it, finds a bedroom and a bathroom there. The room is dark where threadbare curtains are drawn across the windows, but Dean can make out the neatly made bed. Unslept in.

Behind him Cas says. "I believe so."

"Can you be more specific?" Dean demands, closing the door to the bedroom and returning to Cas's side.

"No," Cas replies, which is about what Dean expected. "I don't know everything, and I don't know what this is."

"There are twelve people missing," Sam tells him. Taking one last wary look around the room, Sam seems to decide the lodge is safe enough and shrugs out of his pack, goes over to check out the fireplace. The sun is setting fast now and they'll need the flashlights in their packs soon unless they can start a fire. There are no logs though. Nothing to burn except the ugly furniture.

"Not all of them were lost in the mountains," Sam continues. "The snow started a month ago. We can't find any evidence of anything, either natural or local legends, that might explain it." He's frowning at the fire grate accusingly and rubbing his hands on his thighs, trying to get warm. "Jesus. I wish I could take these boots off," he says.

"Stop bitching," Dean shoots back, even though he agrees. His feet are cold and soggy and uncomfortable. There's no way he's taking his boots off though, not when he feels like even the walls have the potential for evil. For trying to kill them. So far it's just been snow and wind and shadows and that just makes it worse; the not knowing what might be coming.

Cas walks right up to Sam and puts a hand on his shoulder and Dean watches as Sam shivers. He can tell Cas is doing something because Sam is looking down at Cas with something a little like awe.

"Many creatures," Cas tells them, "were displaced by the Apocalypse. Perhaps hiding from hunters, or from Lucifer, or from demons or angels, they tried to find new places."

"Or make new places for themselves?" Sam suggests. "Cas-"

"Yes," Cas cuts Sam off, lets his hand fall from Sam's shoulder and paces over to Dean.

"A supernatural refugee, huh?" Dean watches as Cas reaches out and holds onto his elbow, and then there's warmth flooding through him, spreading out from Cas's touch, up his arms and into his body.

"Yes," Cas says again, and Dean thinks there's an upward tilt to Cas's mouth which might just be a smile, and that it might be _smug_.

"That's a cool trick, Cas. Thanks," Sam is saying somewhere nearby. He's moving around the room, shaking out his arms like he's remembering how to move them again.

"It's not a trick," Cas tells them. Tells Dean. He's staring, and Dean wonders what it is, this heat passing through him, making him remember what it feels like to have limbs that don't ache and sting. Dean knows it's Cas. He can tell that much, because it's somehow familiar, like Cas's voice or his trench coat or his glare.

"What did you hope to achieve?" Cas asks, not looking away. He sounds more curious than anything. He doesn't blink. "Coming out here?"

"We heard reports of the ghosts," Sam replies. Dean can hear Sam shifting nervously. "Up by this lodge. It's where seven of the missing people were last seen. Seemed like the best place to start."

Cas nods. "There are no dead here. They were taken from this place."

"You know where to?" Dean asks. Cas still hasn't taken his hand away, or looked anywhere other than right back at Dean. It's been weeks since he saw Cas last, and Dean wonders if maybe Cas missed him. Them. He doesn't ask about Heaven or what's going on with Cas up there. He never asks, and Cas never offers.

"Further up the mountain." Then Cas looks towards the kitchenette, or more likely to something further away, beyond the walls of the lodge. "I know which way."

"We don't even know what it is," Sam points out.

"If Cas doesn't know then we're gonna find out till we meet it." When Dean looks over at Sam, his brother is giving him a strange look. "What?"

Sam raises his eyebrows and pointedly looks down at where Cas has a hand on his arm. "I'm older than you," Dean jokes. "I need more warming up."

"Uh huh," is the only reply he gets.

"Rest tonight," Cas says, not noticing at all that he's doing something weird. He never notices. "I will keep watch."

"You'll need to let go of Dean's arm, Cas," Sam teases, "If he's gonna sit down."

Cas looks down curiously at his own hand, and Dean sends Sam an annoyed forwn because seriously. It's not nice to tease the clueless angel. Even if he does it too. And just for a few moments, Dean realises, he's barely noticed the creeping cold and the tense, uneasy atmosphere.

Dean doesn't like it at all when Cas lets him go.

***

Dean's not sure what wakes him. It's quiet and all he can hear is Sam's breathing and the wind rattling the windows in their frames and the door creaking on its hinges like something's trying to get in.

Blinking the sleep out of his eyes, Dean winces, his neck stiff from where he's fallen asleep slumped into one of the lodge's armchairs. The next things Dean notices is that Cas is nowhere to be seen. He thinks about calling out, but there's a chill to the room Dean doesn't think is just the cold. They'd laid down salt at the doors, so it can't be ghosts or demons, but Dean's been in this game long enough to know not all supernatural beings react to salt.

Dean holds himself still, just listening to the sounds of the room. They'd pulled the blankets from the bed and Dean can feel the scratchy wool against his neck and his hands. He's sure he can hear floor boards creaking, like someone's walking across them slowly, carefully, and Dean feels like he's four again and he can hear strangers in the house even when he knows there's no one there.

Dean's eyes snap open. It's pitch black in the room and Dean waits for his sight to adjust, keeping his breath even, not turning his head to just _look_. Eventually he can make out the outline of the fireplace and the shape of his pack close by. His knife is still in his pocket but the shotgun is somewhere beside Sam's chair. Dean wishes he'd brought his own but there's only so much you can carry up a mountain.

There's a banging on the door then that makes Dean jump. It's just the wind, he tells himself, but it's loud, and it doesn't stop. A ghost, maybe, trying to get in. Maybe Cas. But there're no angel wards up, nothing to keep him out, and since when has Cas bothered with doors. Or knocking. Unless something's got him. Unless he's in trouble.

Dean's moving towards the window before he even thinks about what he's doing, letting the blankets fall to the floor. Cas can take care of himself, Dean knows. Cas is powered up more than ever. He'd said he would watch over Dean and Sam as they slept though, and Dean knows Cas wouldn't have left without a damned good reason.

There's a weird feeling twisting up his insides and Dean doesn't know what this unease is. Why it's got him so wound up. Except that Dean has always relied on his instincts on hunts and he's not about to start ignoring them now. They're not wrong often.

At the window, Dean pushes aside the curtains cautiously and moonlight floods in, brighter than Dean expected.

He can see the path they'd dug out to open the lodge's door. There's no one there. It's a relief and concerning all at once, because there's still something not right here.

Sam hasn't woken up, and that's not right either.

Outside, all he can make out is snow, on the ground, still falling heavily, swept up in the strong winds reminding Dean of snow globes. Dean thinks he can make out patterns in the snow - human shapes - but it could be a trick of the light. Maybe his imagination.

Maybe he just can't see Cas, he thinks. The snowfall is so heavy maybe he just can't see him. The wind is so loud that maybe he can't hear him. It won't hurt, he tells himself, to open the door and check. The threshold is lined with salt, and if Cas is in trouble and Dean doesn't check it out he'll never be able to forgive himself. He's not so emotionally stunted as Sam thinks that he can't admit that he cares what happens to Cas. And yeah, he does get concerned when Cas is gone a long time in Heaven because if there's someone who knows just how little you can trust an angel it's Dean. Except for Cas, who Dean would trust one hell of a lot more than most humans. Cas knows what it's like- to be powerless and to be hopeless but still keep fighting- and he cared what happened to humanity even before that.

So, it's not a difficult decision to slide his way along the wall from the window to the door. He leaves the curtain open a fraction.

Dean's not sure why he's stepping so carefully, like he's afraid to trip over his own feet, or like he's trying to creep up on someone. If there is something outside it'll know Dean's there as soon as he opens the door. But it's habit, and Dean takes his time unlatching the door as quietly as he can, pulling it open slowly.

It's difficult, because the wind is pushing against him and for a second Dean is convinced someone, or something, is out there. It's not shoving though; more like a continuous weight. Nothing unnatural, Dean decides. Nothing forcing its way in.

He doesn't pull the door all the way open, just half-way. Peering out, there's nothing but the snowstorm no matter how hard he stares. It's kind of mesmerising; the patterns it makes; the way the glare burns weird shapes into his eyes. Even the bite of the cold against his face is kind of nice; refreshing after the mustiness of the lodge and its rotting furniture.

Dean can't look away, even though he knows he should. He feels his hand slip off the door and hears it's hinges scream and the wood bang against the side of the lodge, opened wide by the gale. Snow blows around him and Dean can feel the wetness of its touch against the skin of his face and the backs of his hands. Dean finds himself wanting more; wanting to feel the softness and the wetness of the snow on the ground against his arms and his neck. He's never wondered, before, what it would be like to walk in a snowstorm like this, without the weight of a jacket and the confining discomfort of heavy boots. He wants to know _now_.

It's easy to unzip his coat and push it off his arms. His sweater follows, then his shirt, until his chest is bared to the elements. It feels awesome, and Dean wants more.

His boots are more difficult, his hands clumsy undoing the laces like he's half asleep, but he gets them off. Pulls off his socks too.

He knows he's smiling when he steps carefully over the salt line, sighs at the way his feet sink into the snow, his toes burning pleasantly with the cold. Dean can't imagine why he minded this, before. Why he was afraid of it. There's a comfort in how the storm wraps him up in wind and snow, caresses him, and Dean walks out further into it.

Within the howling and the shifting and the crunch of ice under his feet Dean's sure he can hear something - someone - calling. Not urgently, but welcoming. Warming. Some part of Dean's mind tells him this is a bad idea. He shouldn't be here. That this is a stupid thing to be doing. That he should be _afraid_.

How though, Dean thinks, could he ever be afraid of something so gentle sounding, so all-loving?

He sees her then, smiling at him. She reminds Dean of his mother, and the pain and the longing of it urges him on. He walks faster, breaks into a run, and feels his lungs heaving with the effort. It doesn't hurt.

She watches Dean approach with kindness in her eyes and Dean can see that she's speaking even if he can't make out the words. She isn't far and it takes Dean hardly any time at all before he's standing before her, taking in her black hair and her pale face. She reaches out towards Dean with long fingers and for a second Dean wants to flinch away from the touch. It's cold, he thinks, except it's not.

Where her palms touch his cheeks it's only warm and alive and mostly Dean just feels kind of happy and tired. It's been a long time since he felt this content. This at peace. This _sure_. He wants to stay forever, in the quiet storm, with this woman who isn't his mother but could be. Dean thinks that he would like for Sam to be here with him, to share this too. And Cas, who doesn’t get out much. He should know what this feels like.

It's weird, but the memory of Sam and Cas bring cold and hunger. _Anger_. His face burns. He aches. It shouldn’t be like this, Dean thinks.

He remembers more; that Cas was missing, that Sam is back in the cabin sleeping when he shouldn't be. Dean remembers that they're looking for something. There were ghosts in the snow. There was something old in the storm, Cas said. On the mountain. People had disappeared.

Like him. Lost in the snow. And Dean thinks, what am I doing here? And he thinks, this is how it happened. Dean remembers then that he has a knife but, _fuck_, he can't feel his fingers at all and he can't move and his head _hurts_. He opens his eyes. He can't remember when he ever closed them.

The woman is still standing in front of him but now she's frowning and looking down at Dean like she's disappointed. Her hands are like ice against the sides of face and it's hard to breathe. She doesn't look human, Dean realises. He's been fucking tricked; called out like an idiot by some snow-siren-thing.

He's cold. He's so fucking _cold_.

Dean tries calling out, but his lips are dry and his throat is sore and all he can manage is a hoarse croak that there's no way Sam could hear even if he were standing only feet away. And Cas. Who the fuck knows where _Cas_ is.

Maybe it's enough though, because out the corner of his eye, behind the creature, over her stark white arm and beyond her black hair, Dean sees that damn trench coat.

Cas is moving towards them with inhuman speed, the snow falling away from him, moving out of his way like it doesn't dare even touch him. It's about all Dean can do to keep his eyes open to watch. He doesn't get to see Cas like this much, when he's not even pretending to be human but is instead powerful and wrathful, and there's fury on his face that Dean can only remember seeing once before.

The woman- the creature- must feel him approaching because suddenly she turns towards Cas, but she doesn't let Dean go. She's killing him, Dean realises.

Her mouth opens and she screams. The sound is piercing, but it's no worse than angel-speak. Dean has no clue if it has any effect on Cas because he can't see him anymore; he's on the ground, wrapped up in snow that feels like silk, pale, deathly cold hands on his cheeks and black hair falling over his chest, the strands of it slicing across his skin like knives. Her eyes are white. Dean can't believe he didn't notice before. Didn't _see_. He doesn't know how he could ever have thought they were _kind_.

Then, he sees the beige arm of Cas's coat. Cas presses his hand to the creature's forehead and he can hear her snarling, but the stinging cold against the sides of his face tells Dean she still hasn't let go. It's kind of fascinating to watch as Cas tries wrenching the woman's head straight off her shoulders. She howls, but her grip on him doesn't falter. Cas puts his hands around her neck and squeezes, and that has no effect either. He speaks, voice low and edged with anger, and Dean recognises it as the language Cas always uses for spells, all stilted, clipped, cut-off sounds. Dean wonders at how he can't feel much of anything anymore except the press of fingers against his skull.

Cas glances at him then, and his eyes are wide. Dean thinks he can't have long left to live if Cas is looking at him like that. It definitely doesn't feel like he does. It's getting hard to keep his eyes open. To concentrate on following what's going on around him. He does hear Cas say, "Dean," though, or he thinks he does, because then Cas turns away, takes the creature's head in his hands - the same way she's holding Dean - and then the world turns to pain, like someone's reached down into him and is trying to extract his spine through his neck.

It goes on, and on, and it hurts so much and Dean can't see and he can't hear and he can't think and he's mostly just really fucking glad when everything _stops_.

***

The first thing Dean hears is Cas.

He's speaking fast. So fast Dean that can't understand what he's saying. It doesn't even really sound like him. Or at least, what Dean's come to think of as Cas's voice; Jimmy Novak's voice. It doesn't even sound much like English, and it's weird, Dean thinks, how he can recognise the words at all.

He's saying, "Dean is here," and he's saying, "He's here," and "It's empty," and "We'll get it back."

There are other words too. They're deeper. Further away. "Across the-", "Deploy-", and "I'm busy-"

Not talking to him then.

Dean tries to move, or at least open his eyes, but he can't do either and he thinks, _fuck._ The snow bitch. Maybe she's frozen him solid. Maybe he's in one of those comas where you can't wake up and all you get to do is lie there and listen to the world around you as everyone wonders if you're not already dead.

He can hear worry and fear in Sam's voice when he replies - to Cas, Dean guesses - "Is he okay? This is so screwed up, Cas."

Maybe he's dying. Maybe he _is_ dead.

"I can hold him," he hears Cas say, which makes absolutely no sense and Dean is about ready to start panicking because he can't _feel_ anything. He remembers this from when he was almost dead before, just a ghost, and the world became a thing beyond his reach. He can't do that again. Not when he's just gotten back his brother and his life. He tries shouting for Sam and he fights to pull muscles that just don't feel like they're there anymore.

He's struggling against nothing; fighting when there's nothing pushing back, and it's so fucking frustrating Dean fights harder. He won't give up. He won't.

Yeah, he's an idiot for falling for that witch's trick, but Cas was there. Cas would've saved him, Dean's sure of it. Then, Dean knows Cas is speaking to him when he says, in that not-English, unfamiliar-familiar voice, "Dean. Don't fight me."

"I'm not fighting you," Dean tries to say. There's no sound, but Cas must have heard it anyway because he replies, "You are. Stop it."

There's something weirdly comforting about the way Cas is ordering him around, like everything's normal.

"I can't feel anything," Dean tells him without saying anything. He wonders if Cas is reading his mind.

"I know," Cas says, and Dean is ridiculously relieved that at least someone seems to know what the fuck is going on here. "Be calm, Dean," Cas adds.

"Not helping, Cas." Dean is pissed, and there's still a creeping discomfort down his non-existent back like he's trapped. Like he'll never move again. "Why can't I feel anything?"

He hears Sam demand, "What's going on? Cas?"

"I am explaining," Cas says, and Dean can tell it's directed at them both. He's annoyed. Dean strains, tries to open his eyes or move his hands or breathe or _something_. He thinks he'd be gritting his teeth if he had any. It's like he's being pulled in a hundred different directions. Somewhere that Dean is pretty sure is not in his head he can hear other conversations Cas is having and he can't understand that at all. "Return to the-" he hears. "It's his decision." Cas sounds somewhere between regretful and vengeful when he says, "Kill them."

"What is that?" Dean asks. He doesn't try to speak. He's tired, but he doesn't ache. Of course he doesn't ache.

Cas is quiet for a long moment before he questions, "You can hear that?"

"Yeah," Dean says, and immediately the sound cuts out. Dean didn't realise how loud it was until it's gone. It's just more silence, like the loss of another sense in what is already maddening blankness. "The hell?"

"You shouldn't-" Cas starts, but cuts himself off, tries again. "Let me explain. Be calm. You're not dead and I won't allow you to be."

That, at least, is encouraging. He would nod, except he can't, so Dean agrees, "Okay," and tries to ignore the panic and tries not to notice that he has no touch or taste or smell or sight. He focuses instead on Cas's voice.

"The snow creature was trying to take your life," Cas explains, and yeah, Dean got that part already. "She had already taken too much, so this was the only course of action left to me."

Dean doesn't like the sound of that.

"What course of action?" he asks warily.

"She was trying to take your soul. I took it back."

"Took it back," Dean repeats. He has a bad feeling he knows where this is going.

"I have held your soul before. This is no different," Cas goes on. Not in English. Not in human, and now that he's concentrating Dean doesn't think the annoyance - the harried feeling - is his.

"Cas." He's not speaking with a voice. Just thought. "Where am I?"

"In me."

Under different circumstances Dean would've grinned at the phrase, teased Cas for it.

Right now he can't bring himself to see the funny side of this. "My body?"

"The snow creature has it," Cas tells him. He doesn't seem much concerned about that.

"And what the hell is she doing with it?"

"Taking its... energy."

"She's killing me and you're just standing here doing nothing?" Dean can feel the panic returning. "As such as I love being stuck _inside you_, Cas, I can't live like this!"

"You won't," Cas says, and it sounds like a promise. "It will take time. She will make it last. We'll get it back and I will return your soul to your body."

He makes it sound simple, like it's nothing, but Dean gets the feeling Cas is hiding something. A lot of somethings.

"You know what she is?" Dean demands, because he wants to know what the freaking hell has stolen his body. He wants to know that Cas knows how to kill the bitch.

The way Cas pauses before he answers does not do anything for Dean's confidence.

"She is a force of nature," Cas settles on. "A Lady of the Snow."

"So how do we deal with her?"

"She can't be killed," Cas tells him, and somehow what Cas knows bleeds into Dean's head - his head that isn't his head - and Dean can see that she's like water, or air, or Dean's love for the Impala. Eternal. Indestructible. A thing that just _is_.

"Then what can we do? We can't just let her keep on turning Colorado into a summertime ski resort."

"We can appease her," Cas says, then won't say anything further.

More stuff he's hiding, Dean realises.

Dean wonders what Sam is doing. If he already knows all of this. How long he's been out of it inside Cas's head.

It's only then that Dean really thinks about where he is. What he's inside.

Jimmy had said sharing mind-space with an angel was like being chained to a comet, but all Dean's had is blank space, Cas talking-not-talking, and some awareness of sound in his ears. In Cas's ears.

"You're not my vessel," Cas says, like he can read Dean's mind, which Dean's pretty certain he can now. That is not good. "It's different."

Dean thinks of Jimmy, and thinks about how he can't feel - hear, or see, or whatever - anything of him. This should be his body, so Dean guesses the poor guy must be in here somewhere. But there's nothing.

"Jimmy is gone," Cas says, and from the lack of anything Dean can feel around that statement he's not going to say anything more about that either.

Dean knows a sore point when he sees one.

And Cas has been replying to his thoughts. "Stop reading my mind, Cas."

"I can't hear you if I don't." Cas does at least sound vaguely apologetic.

"Fuck," Dean says. Thinks. And then because he knows Cas can hear everything he thinks, "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck."

"Please, Dean," Cas chides. He's not exactly comfortable with this either, Dean can tell, and it makes Dean feel perversely better.

Dean needs more than this, though. He's only human, and he'll go mad if he has to go on not-feeling for much longer. "I can hear. You need to let me see."

"I don't see like you do," Cas tries. But already Dean thinks he can make out light. Shapes maybe. It's all overlaid with colours and patterns that are all wrong, that make Dean's head hurt. Or his brain, or his soul, or whatever he is now.

"This is like a trip," Dean thinks. Says. He watches as the shapes sharpen and the world orders itself into something resembling the hunting lodge. Sam is standing in front of him. Cas. Them. He doesn't exactly know how he recognises Sam when Dean can't exactly make out the features of his face with Cas's vision, or the clothes he's wearing. It's more a feeling. A knowledge that the patterns and outlines he's seeing are Sam. "Shit." Dean wishes he could shake his head to clear it, but it's not _his_ head.

When he looks at the furniture he sees the ghosts of forests and fields and the sun and water.

"It's memory," Cas explains.

"This is how you see?" Dean wonders at how he's not freaking out at this. He's in Cas and he hasn't got a body and he's seeing with angel eyes and the world is _fucked up_.

"The world is not fucked up," Cas tells him. "This is how it is."

And, oh yeah, Cas can hear every thought he has now.

"I can't," Cas says. "Or, more accurately, I won't. But I have seen all of you before."

Dean isn't sure if that was meant to be reassuring because it really isn't. Instead, Dean concentrates on Sam. Dean knows, because he can read the emotions coming off Sam like he'd read words from a book, that his brother is worried, fascinated, unsure, hopeful, and impatient.

"I'm trying to limit my sight to something you can understand." Cas says it like a confession. He doesn't know what he's doing, Dean realises. Cas is unsure.

"I can tell what you're feeling." Which is pretty cool, because if Cas can tell what Dean is thinking, it's only fair that he gets something back from Cas.

"Apparently," is Cas's reply. He's not happy about it. "There are still two hours until dawn," Cas says, and he's speaking to both Dean and Sam again. "We should rest until then."

It's so light, the world so full of colour, that it's weird to think that to human eyes it's still dark. Dean watches and listens as Sam agrees, gives Cas a long, considering look, and then settles himself back into the armchair. He lays the shotgun across his lap, his hand resting lightly over it. Through Cas's eyes, Dean knows that Sam is wide-awake and that he's cold. Dean remembers he can't feel anything.

"You don't want to feel as I do," Cas tells him, and his voice is sharp. Final.

He can see movement though, even if he can't feel it; Cas turning, moving lower. Sitting down, Dean guesses.

"You said 'we' need rest."

"Yes," Cas replies. He doesn't close his eyes but the colours and the light dim, turn unfocused. Again, there's that feeling that Cas is hiding something.

"You're not flying us angel-express out of here. What did she do to you?" He doesn't feel powerful, or strong, but weary and Dean guesses that isn't all him.

Cas pauses, and Dean considers trying to pry into Cas's thoughts somehow, but then he replies, "She drew out some of my life."

"Some?"

"There's a lot to take," Cas assures Dean, and it doesn't assure him at all.

"She took enough that you can't fly. Or teleport. Whatever it is you do."

He thinks Cas sighs. "I could try, but I won't risk it with your soul like this. The sacrifice was necessary. I'll be fine."

Dean's heard that phrase a thousand times and he doesn't trust it anymore inside an angel's head than he does anywhere else. And he's never, never liked the word sacrifice.

But he hears Cas say, "Rest," half an order, half a request, and Dean lets it go. For now.

At least, Dean thinks, there's no pain like this. There's no cold. And he doesn't have to worry about Cas leaving.

***

Watching the world through Cas's eyes in the light of day is blinding and confusing as hell. It takes Dean a long time to work out what he's seeing; what is ground and what is sky; what is his brother. He can see every snowflake and every movement of the wind. Worse, he knows what every movement _will_ be.

The worst things of all are the ghosts.

Dean can see their lives and their deaths and when he looks at them he is infinitely sad in a way that Dean is sure isn't him or Cas. They're like bundles of memories, lost and empty of anything but misery and loneliness.

Dean wants to ask Cas not to look at them, but they could still be dangerous. Cas has pity for the ghosts, but also distrust.

The longer Dean is in Cas's head, or Grace, or wherever he is, the more he finds he can tell what Cas is feeling, and sometimes what he's thinking.

He sees conflict, and irritation at his own weakness, and so much freaking love it hurts for Dean to look at it. For him, for Sam, for the Earth and humanity, for his brothers and for God. Cas, Dean learns, doesn't much like the snow. He's used to clear skies and the sun. It's better for flying. Cas loves heights, and finds shoes uncomfortable.

It's all there and Cas doesn't seem to mind that Dean can see it.

"My brothers would know all this," Cas tells him, and that explains a lot about how Cas has no idea about personal space or privacy. He's never had any himself.

Somewhere around noon, and Dean knows it's noon because Cas knows, Dean starts to hear the other voices again. They're insistent, and getting louder, and Dean thinks Cas's control is slipping.

Cas is tired, and he wants to fly, but he refuses to even consider it whilst he's holding Dean's soul. It could tear Dean apart. It could mix them together in a way that Cas will never be able to undo. Dean sees it all in Cas's head and agrees that yeah, maybe flying isn't the greatest idea.

Cas snaps at the other voices, and tells them to go away, and Dean knows they hurt his head.

"That's angel radio," Dean realises.

"You can hear them again?" Cas sighs. "I apologise."

"No, it's cool," Dean tells him. Cas has already got enough shit to do without hiding parts of himself away as well. "Are they always this annoying?"

Dean thinks Cas laughs. "They are."

They don't talk about it again, because Dean can't think of anything else to say, and Cas doesn't seem inclined to tell him anything more. The background chattering goes on, and when Dean concentrates on it he can hear that it's not all directed at Cas, but it's conversations and arguments and promises between other angels whose names Cas knows. There are hundreds. Maybe thousands. It's creepy, but to Cas it's familiar and welcome and he missed it more than anything else when he was cut off. The silence was the worst thing of all.

Dean wishes he didn't know. He wishes he didn't know how much getting Cas to rebel had fucking hurt him.

"It was my decision," Cas says in reply to the thought. "I knew what would happen."

There was a lie in that, but Dean lets it go.

Inside Cas's head, listening to the sounds of his brothers and to the sway of Cas's thoughts, and trying to work out what he's seeing, Dean becomes aware of how cut off from the world he is like this. Closeted away, kept safe. He can't feel much of anything physical. It surprises him then when Sam stumbles over nothing. Cas catches his arm.

The amount of strange, unfamiliar information he's trying to work through is distracting Dean from the cold, dangerous terrain outside of Cas's head. It's snowing, heavier now than it had been the day before, and Dean sees rather than feels just how ice-cold and strong the winds have become. Sam is huddled in on himself, trying to bury his chin in the collar of his jacket. The skin of his face is burnt and sore, and he's shivering, getting dangerously cold.

Cas puts a hand on Sam's shoulder as he'd done the night before, and Dean sees warmth flooding into his body.

Sam sighs and straightens. "Shit. Thanks, Cas." Throwing Cas a half-hearted smile, he says, "I think I'm jealous of Dean right now. At least he's warm."

"He's neither warm nor cold," Cas tells Sam, and pulls Sam close to his side. "We must find somewhere for you to rest."

Cas stretches his senses, trying to locate some structure or natural shelter close by, and it's freaking weird because Dean can suddenly see the world as a map, lined with altitudes and paths and what life there is left. He can see something, in the distance, that Dean thinks is the snow-witch creature. Her presence is like an empty space, an absence seeping out around her, drawing the life out of everything she comes into contact with. They're headed towards it by the most direct route Cas can find with his freaky map-brain.

There's a couple lodges that Cas can make out, several miles away. One is larger, but more out of the way. He thinks it bears more chance of having heat.

"Does it have more chance of having people? Or electricity?" Dean asks.

Cas replies, "No. No, there are no other living humans on this mountain."

"Then go with the smaller place," Dean suggests. "It won't matter, and Sam needs to get out of this storm."

Dean didn't think it could, but the winds around them are getting stronger, and he wonders if they shouldn't have let Sam stay behind in the lodge.

"He would never have remained behind," Cas says, which is true enough. It's frustrating though, to watch Sam suffer and to not be able to do anything about it. To rely on Cas for everything.

"I won't let him come to harm," Cas assures him. There's a sting of hurt to the thought, like Cas doesn't think Dean trusts him.

It's bullshit. There's no one else living, save maybe Bobby, who Dean would trust Sam with more. "I know, Cas," he tells him. "I just feel useless like this." Without any body to call his own. Without even a voice.

"We will get you back." Cas sounds certain, same as he had the night before, but there's more of a strain to his thoughts now. Worn down, Dean realises.

Cas has still got his hands on Sam, keeping him warm, and somehow he's keeping the ghosts at a distance, and he's constantly ensuring they're on the correct path, that there are no dangers ahead. He's talking to his brothers too, and Dean can only hear half of that. Dean knows that Cas is keeping Dean walled up as best he can too, keeping him separate from a whole lot of Cas that Dean can't even begin to imagine. It's all taking energy, and now that Dean knows what to look for, he can see that the snow-bitch took more of Cas's strength than he'd admitted to.

"It wouldn't help you to know," Cas says, and Dean gets a feeling like he's shrugging it off. Not important. "I'm still strong enough for this."

Dean believes it, but he's starting to feel the wind and the wet snow against Cas's face, and he's getting the impression of fingers that are too large and stiff. He wonders if this is what it feels like when Cas's angel-juice slips away; no longer able to keep the physical nature of humanity at a distance, no longer able to stop annoying human concerns from overtaking his vessel. His body.

Dean knows Cas can hear his thoughts, but Cas holds his silence, and all Dean can feel is his discomfort.

***

By the time they reach the shelter Sam is shivering despite Cas repeatedly using his mojo to defreeze him. It's getting more and more difficult for Cas to do even that, Dean knows, but Cas says nothing to Sam.

The shelter is little more than a shack and there's nothing inside, but it's dry, even if it smells musky and rotten. Dean hasn't missed the fact that he can smell now. He thinks he can taste too; something cool and bitter. Of everything, Dean thinks that knowing what the inside of Cas's mouth tastes like is the most intimate thing he's felt so far. It makes him think of kissing and that leads to touch and that leads to sex, and Dean will not let himself think those things when Cas can see it _all._

"It's human," Cas says, apparently trying to be helpful when Dean wishes he'd just pretend that Dean hadn't just been thinking about porn and how he hadn't gotten laid in months and how Dean hadn't slept with a guy in years.

Just in case Cas hadn't been able to tell how much Dean does not want to talk about this, he tells him, "Shut up."

Cas obliges, concentrates instead on helping Sam check their supplies. Cas is carrying Dean's pack but they've got limited food between them and nothing that'll help warm Sam up. Dean isn't sure it's such a great idea when Cas takes off his coat and wraps it around Sam's legs.

"I know you can feel this cold," Dean says.

"It won't kill me." There's a prickling pain in Cas's fingers and his feet, and Dean can tell he's directing the heat of his body inwards, keeping his body working efficiently. It's all energy Cas doesn't seem to have.

Dean would ask if Cas is sure he can't just take them away; get himself and Sam to safety because as much as Dean wants his body back he's not going to watch Cas and his brother die for it.

"You can't stay here forever," Cas says. "I can't keep you indefinitely."

If Dean had a mouth and breath he'd snort. "You make me sound like a pet."

Cas doesn't reply. He's serious, and Dean can see the futures Cas can see; where Dean is subsumed into Cas, broken apart until he _is_ Cas. (Dean can think of worse fates.) He can see a future where Cas gives up Jimmy's body to Dean, and Dean can look on Cas's true form and hear his true voice with Jimmy's eyes and Jimmy's ears. (That would be pretty awesome, except where he and Sam never make it off the mountain alive.) There's a future where Cas tries to return summer, tries to banish the snow and the cold. (It kills him, and the snow-witch laughs.)

There's no future where Cas leaves them. Cas fights to keep Dean from seeing futures where Sam freezes to death in the snow, where Cas's brothers take the opportunity of his current weakness to come and cut his Grace out. Dean sees them anyway.

"You're quiet," Dean hears Sam say, and he sounds hoarse, tired, but close by.

"Dean is loud," Cas replies, and Sam laughs.

"Yeah," he agrees. "It can't be much fun having him inside you."

Dean's fairly sure Sam's finding this way too funny. He sees endless teasing in his future.

Cas says to Sam, "Dean believes you meant that to be innuendo."

Shit.

Sam laughs, and it's a good sound, even if it's a lot embarrassed, and Sam's teeth are chattering. "Um," is about all Sam manages to say.

And Dean is not thinking about Cas like that. Not here. Not ever. He ruthlessly suppresses the thought that Cas isn't bad looking, and that he's the best friend he's ever had, and maybe it would be cool to maybe touch him (when he has hands again) because _fucking hell Cas can hear all of it_.

Maybe Cas is distracted keeping Sam warm, sitting close beside him, arms pressed together, or maybe he's showing some never-before-seen discretion because Dean can't discern much of a reaction to the not-so-subtle images Dean can't seem to stop. This isn't the time, and it definitely isn't the place, even if Dean does wish, just a little, he could know what Cas would think about maybe doing that with him.

There's nothing like rejection though, and Dean wonders if Cas just doesn't know what to think about it because he's never actually done anything like that before.

In the real world, Cas is saying to Sam, "I think she's trying to kill you," and that gets Dean's attention.

Dean can feel Sam leaning heavily against Cas's arm. "She has no interest in you," Cas says. "Doing this, making ice and cold, is as simple as breathing for her."

"Why kill me? Why doesn't she want my life too, like she did Dean's?"

In Cas's head, Dean sees something that he thinks is memory, of places he's never seen and people he doesn't know. Some are dead, and some are living, and some of them are wearing stupid hats. There's deep snow. It buries housed with wide, tiled roofs, and Cas is looking down at the shrivelled, blue corpses of what was once a family. Except, Dean realises, it's not Cas looking down. This is the memory of another angel.

"She seeks out those with more years," Cas tells Sam.

"Dean's not that much older than me," Sam points out.

"Where the Lady of the Snow is concerned, his years in hell count."

Sam frowns, looking down at his gloved hands, rubbing them together. Dean knows that look.

Guilt.

Like any good Winchester, he changes the subject. "What are we going to do?" Sam asks. "We can't stay here forever."

Sam doesn't say, _I'll die without you here_, but both Cas and Dean hear it anyway. Even dampened through layers of angel, Dean can feel that the temperature is dropping fast. It's so cold now that breathing has become difficult. There's no way Sam isn't risking hypothermia sitting here.

"Rest a while," Cas says. "Eat, and drink. Then we will continue on."

Cas doesn't tell Sam that he doesn't know how to defeat the snow-witch. He doesn't tell Sam he's beginning to feel hunger and thirst too, and wants to lie down and sleep himself.

"There's a lot you don't tell us," Dean accuses.

Cas's silences are really starting to get old.

***

Sam sleeps and Cas never closes his eyes but the movement of his thoughts slow, and the voices of his brothers quiet to something almost soothing, like music in the background.

It doesn't make a difference that Dean hasn't got any muscles or limbs, he still aches from inaction. He's restless, but he tries to keep it to himself, not wanting to disturb Cas. Instead he watches with Cas's eyes, and listens with Cas's hearing, and learns that he can see outside the walls of the shack if he ignores the panels of wood and their lives. He can hear the sound of snow falling on snow, and he can sense that the sun is moving around the Earth somewhere above the thick, grey clouds that fill the sky. It's weird, but almost comforting.

Dean knows there are ghosts outside too, watching. With Cas resting, or whatever it is he's doing, something of his control slips and Dean can see them with more clarity. He can sense their anger and their hatred towards the living. They're cold. They only want to be warm, but they have no hope that they ever will be.

And as he rests, Cas is starting to feel the effects of the cold. He's started shivering, his breathing and his heart rate picking up. It doesn't help that he's given his coat and jacket to Sam. As soon as he's awake Dean is going to tell the idiot angel to put on the clothes in the pack he's carrying. Dean's jacket and sweater are in there. It's not like he's using them. Dean shies away from that thought, because he really doesn't want to think about what's happening to _his_ body. If he'll even be able to go back to it once they find it.

It's then that there's a banging on the door that would make Dean jump if he had a body to move, and suddenly it’s like the night before all over again.

"Cas," Dean thinks. "Cas!"

He won't fall for that crap again. He won't let Sam or Cas either.

"I hear it," Cas says, sounding tired, but alert.

It's dark in the shelter where there's only one small window high up in the wall behind them, but with Cas's eyes Dean can see that Sam's awake and looking at him. Them.

"We salted the lines," Sam whispers, like it would make any difference. She knows they're here. She can smell their warmth.

"That will not keep her out for long," Cas says.

Cas stands up, and Dean doesn't miss the way his muscles protest the movement, aching and stiff from sitting for too long on the cold ground. He takes a knife from Dean's pack, and Dean doesn't like where he thinks this is going.

"Cas-" he says, warily.

To Cas's eyes, the knife blade is stained with the blood of hundreds of monsters and humans and animals. He can see them all die on its sharp edge. "There is no other way," he says, and draws the blade across his palm. It hurts, and Dean can feel the skin splitting open as the knife cuts through layers of muscle. He'd always thought that Cas didn't experience pain in the same way a human would, but somehow it's worse. This is feeling every single nerve that's cut, every inch of sharp blade pull at flesh, every torn blood vessel.

Dean can feel Cas's blood being pushed out of his body and as he watches it's red and isn't red. It is and isn't the blood of a human and an angel. It's life and it's Grace, curled together. A physical thing full of potential and oxygen and water and as it spills Dean feels ill because it's Cas draining himself of everything he is.

"It's just blood," he hears Cas tell him.

He wants to shout, "It isn't just blood. It fucking _isn't_," and is grimly satisfied when Cas recoils, able to hear it anyway.

"This will drive her away. It will save us. It will save Sam."

It's a low blow, because Cas has to know there's no way Dean can argue with that, so he settles for fuming, and is glad when it irritates Cas.

Cas paints symbols on the door Dean does and doesn't recognise. He reads (Cas writes), "Fuck off, bitch."

"That isn't what it says," Cas tells him, disapproving.

It might not be what it says, but it's what Dean understands. "I'm paraphrasing."

The lines of Cas's blood stretch like spider webs, reaching out across the walls, arching over them across the roof and down, spreading over the floor. Closing them in.

"What is this?" Dean asks, kind of awed by it. He can't look away, each thread shining a dulled silver, fragile but strong.

"Protection," Castiel replies, and the banging on the door stops abruptly when the threads meet and join on the other side of the room, completely enclosing them.

"How long will it last?" Sam asks. He's starting to trip over his sounds, his teeth clacking together so loudly it's getting difficult for him to speak. Cas knows Sam is too cold, and that they don't have long before it becomes a real problem. So Dean knows it too.

"Long enough," Cas answers vaguely, but he's thinking, "These wards could last for days. We will not."

"Cheery," Dean thinks.

To Sam, Cas says, "The sigil will drive the snow creature away. She will retreat to where she has made her home and this will give us time."

Time for what, Dean isn't sure, and neither is Cas.

"We will rest." Cas sits down next to Sam and wraps an arm around Sam's shoulders, pushing what heat he can spare into him. Blood still runs freely from Cas's palm so Cas curls his fingers into a fist. The pull of skin stings. "Another hour and then we continue on."

Leaning heavily against Cas's side, Sam nods.


	2. Chapter 2

By the time the sun is starting to set just lifting his feet through the layers and layers of snow is getting to be almost too much for Cas. It's got to be way below freezing now, and all Cas has is his trench coat. He refuses to wear Dean's jacket for some reason Dean doesn't get at all. His hands are exposed, red raw and burning but Cas refuses to acknowledge he's in pain. It's got to be a thousand times worse for Sam, and half the time Cas has to keep his arm around Sam's back, pulling his along and pushing him up. When Cas takes his weight, has to push beyond what his body's muscles can do, Dean feels something in Cas stretch and expand, giving power to limbs that should bend and snap. This is the angel Castiel, Dean knows, and feels the warmth of it, deep within Cas's half-frozen human vessel.

Still they push on.

Dean tries encouragement, and Cas hisses at him to shut up. He tries conversation and Cas tells him he needs to concentrate. There's nothing Dean can do, trapped inside Cas, and it's driving him crazy, so he tries pouring what strength he thinks he has into Cas, and Cas gets angry and orders him to stop that too.

"Don't give yourself over to me," Cas tells him. "You must keep yourself separate." And okay, so maybe Dean's missing some angel taboo but he still feels like himself, more or less. It's just that now he can listen to the other angels and understand twenty conversations at once. Now he knows the ways into Heaven hidden beside the Morning Star, down the back of the serpent Typhon, along the roads of Asuka, and through the horizon at dusk. He knows what it is to fly, to feel the rushing of air through feathers that aren't feathers.

"You know too much already," Cas says, and he sounds resigned. Exhausted.

"You know everything about me. What's the difference?" Dean wants to know.

"This knowledge isn't meant for you."

By you, Dean tknows Cas means humans.

Dean doesn't think that's the real reason for Cas's discomfort with all this sharing though. More like it's a line Cas has heard a thousand times. Hhe sees Cas in his memories listening and watching and seeing the same things and hearing the same things a thousand times and never understanding any of it. He sees Cas meeting Dean for the first time, in that barn, and it was the first time Cas had ever spoken directly to a human. The first time he ever knew one.) What Dean's seen is dangerous, Dean gets that, but Cas trusts him with it.

"Let me help," Dean tries. He's getting to the point where he's not above begging. There has to be something he can do, and Cas's muscles are pulled tight, cramping painfully. He's breathing hard, and he's sick of shivering. (Dean sees Cas feeling the pinch of cold for the first time as he walks the streets of Moscow in winter searching for a Father he's never going to find. The memory is tinged with bitterness).

It's getting easier to see Cas's thoughts and his memories and to feel his Grace. It's the warmest part of him, and Dean is ashamed to find himself drawn to it, trying not to feel the havoc the outside world is playing with Cas's body.

"There is no shame," Cas says. "As Sam said, at least one of us should be warm." His attempt at humour is poor, but it's hope and it's friendship and Dean takes the feeling and stokes it with a laugh. If it wasn't for the storm and the danger, and for the fact that Cas and Sam are dying and Dean is stuck being useless just watching it all, Dean thinks he wouldn't mind staying here in Cas's mind. He wouldn't mind learning more of him.

Faintly, Dean hears Cas think he would like that too.

"You're talking to Dean again," Sam says. His voice is quiet, cracks on every other word. He licks his lips and Dean can see they're dry; split and bleeding.

Cas hitches Sam up, gets a better grip on his waist and tries to get Sam to move faster. Their legs drag through thick drifts of hard snow. Cas's pants are soaked and stiff with ice. Dean can't even feel his feet anymore. "I am," he tells Sam. "No matter how many times I tell him to be quiet."

Sam looks at Cas (and Dean) and smiles, a weak thing, but his eyes are still bright and alive. "Yeah, that sounds like Dean."

There isn't much sunlight left. Fifty-seven minutes, Cas thinks. It's not that they won't be able to see, because he knows now that Cas doesn't need light to navigate by, but when the sun sets the temperature will drop even more.

At dusk, Castiel thinks, the ghosts and the witches and the old gods are most powerful.

Even better.

Sam's looking ahead of them now, even though Dean's pretty sure he can't see much of anything, with the heavy snow still falling and the quickly disappearing daylight. "What are we gonna do?" Sam asks. "When we get to her?"

It's a good question, and one that Dean's been trying to avoid. Typical Sam to press the issue.

It's easy to see the thoughts that pass through Cas's consciousness; bargain, trade, trick, trap.

"Pick one," Dean tells him.

"Or use them all." Cas has thousands of years of tactical experience and it's all there, laid out in front of Dean. Show off.

Dean's about to ask for more details, to see if Cas has anything like a more concrete plan of what they're going to do because as far as Dean can tell he doesn't. It's not like Dean has anything else to do, either. But then some sense Dean's unfamiliar with catches his (their) attention.

It's approaching danger, and power, and anger, and it's headed towards them.

"That's her," Dean realises. "She's coming back."

"Yes," Cas tell Dean, then to Sam he says, "We have to move more quickly. The snow-witch is returning."

"Fuck," Sam swears, but he picks up his feet, moves faster with Cas's help although he's got to have almost nothing left. "What will she do?"

"Freeze you," Cas says. "Try to take my Grace." Dean hears the thought, "She has a taste for it now."

"You didn't tell us that," Dean accuses. "You didn't say that's why she's coming after you."

"You must have known it, though." Cas manages to sound unconcerned, but there is fear there. Losing his strength, losing what he is and how much that hurts is still fresh in his mind from the apocalypse, and Dean sees it now like an open wound in Cas. He can't do that again. He won't.

Dean is startled by the vehemence with which Cas thinks, "I will not be human again."

"You hated it that much?" Dean asks, and in response is flooded with pain he'd never felt, and emotions he didn't comprehend, and through it all, aching, utter loneliness.

Cas cuts him off, "There's no time for this."

Beside Cas, Sam is panting like he's finding it hard to breathe, and Cas sends warmth to his lungs and to his heart, his own straining and working almost more than they can bear.

"Why is this affecting you so much?" Dean wants to know. "Why aren't you getting your mojo back?"

"This is her domain," Cas explains, but that's all he gets because then Cas is concentrating on keeping Sam moving, on keeping his own feet ploughing through the snow. There's a litany of keepgoingkeepgoingkeepgoing running through Cas's thoughts and Dean adds to it, encouraging and cajoling and not caring that when he'd done that earlier Cas had told him to shut up.

She's close and she's gaining ground. She's made for this. Here, there's nothing to stop her.

Cas casts out with his senses for shelter, or defensible natural formations and comes up with nothing but snow, snow and more snow.

He's going to have to fight, even when he knows there's no way to defeat her.

"There has to be something," Dean insists. Cas thinks, sunlight and warmth; fire.

"We have fire-" Dean starts.

Through Cas's sight, where he can see behind and above and below as well as in front of them, Dean sees the ghosts again, appearing out of nowhere, forming into vaguely human shapes. They're just so fucking sad, Dean wishes he could do something for them.

"They belong to her, now," Cas says. "She won't let them go."

They're her servants and her welcoming committee and they await her arrival with indifference.

"Shotgun-" Sam pants. It's in his backpack, probably frozen solid, but Cas manages to pull it out even as they keep moving, warms it enough that it'll work and pushes it into Sam's shaking hands. With the snow creature gaining on them the ghosts are a potential threat Cas is no longer willing to ignore. Dean doesn't imagine Sam is going to hit much the way he's shivering, but it's better defense than nothing. Cas agrees.

As she draws closer what feels like ice creeps up through Cas's fingertips, along his arms, down his spine. The air stings as Cas takes a breath, freezing his lungs. Cas stops, pushes Sam down to his knees in front of him, wrapping his arms around his brother's shoulders and pulling him close.

Under his breath he grinds out a spell. A prayer. The first thing Cas thinks of that might help. "Keep your bitch hands off my friend," Dean interprets, and doesn't miss the way Cas sighs in exasperation.

It does slow the witch down though, makes her pause and test Cas's strength, pushing up against his will. He holds her back as long as he can and Dean sees the options run through Cas's mind faster than Dean can understand.

"You said we have fire," Cas presses urgently. "What did you mean?"

He doesn't get time to answer though because then the ghosts are suddenly howling and shrieking; honed in on where Sam and Cas huddle together, what passes for arms outstetched towards them and moving closer, heads bent back in rage. Sam cringes like the sound hurts his ears, but it's just irritating to Cas. The sound of the snow-witch driving the ghosts crazy.

Sam pushes himself back and away from where Cas is holding onto him, bringing the shotgun up. It fires, and everyone but Cas is surprised by that. The sound of the shot echoes loudly, dissolves the closest ghost in range. There's agony on its face, that was once a man, thirty-seven. He had a son and liked to play pool on Saturdays.

Dean watches the salt wend its way through his there-not-there body, every grain eating up whatever it was that made up the ghost.

"Memory," Dean hears Cas say. "Ghosts are made of memory."

There's another five ghosts headed their way, and Cas dissolves one with an outstretched hand and a prayer that means, "Be at peace." It's a better way to go than by salt, and probably more permanent; the ghost's entire being just suddenly ceasing to exist. It takes energy though, and Cas has none to spare.

Sam gets another shot off, and Cas is trying to gather enough strength to exorcise the other four ghosts when Dean feels the witch right there, behind them, her breath like icy water against the back of Cas's neck.

"Cas!" Dean warns, not knowing how many things Cas can handle at once anymore.

None of them are quick enough, because then her frozen fingers grip against the sides of Cas's head and she's turning him around to face her with enough force that a human's neck would've snapped.

Dean doesn't remember her face being like this. When she'd come for him he'd been reminded of his mother, soft and sweet. But this - what Cas sees - makes Dean sick. Horrified.

He sees a thousand false faces, each of them kind and welcoming, and below it all, at the truth of it, he sees hollow eyes like glaciers, pasty, dead skin that doesn't quite manage to cover all of an ancient, ancient skull. She's rotted away with hate and loneliness, leaving nothing but this mangled thing who has no tongue and no ears and whose lips are cut open but don't bleed. Her hair is made of glass, and cuts at her own neck. Dean sees the lives she's taken, and the lives she wants to take.

Right now she wants Cas's, and she's taking it, draining his strength through her fingertips. Her broken lips and her skeleton teeth curl into an ugly grin. It hurts, fuck it hurts, the way she pulls at Cas's life. It's like having the skin pried from his muscles and Dean knows what that feels like.

Cas tries to reach up and take hold of the bitch's hands, to get them off him, but touching her flesh burns and Dean hears Cas cry out, then Sam's shout of, "Cas!" in reply.

He can't see what his brother is doing. The snow-witch's fucked-up face fills his (Cas's) vision and his mind with her screeching and gnawing and pulling apart. But he's close and he hasn't been taken out by ghosts and that's all Dean needs.

"We have lighter fluid," Dean tries to tell Cas. "Sam can burn the bitch."

From the way Cas's Grace curls in on itself, drawing away from what is human, from the way Cas's heart rate races and his lips pull back in agony, Dean guesses he doesn't hear him.

Dean tries to take control, to move the muscles of Cas's mouth with his own memory of how he would've called Sam's name in his own body. It doesn't work, but it gets Cas's attention.

"Lighter fluid, Cas," Dean insists. "In Sam's pack."

Cas is losing by inches, succumbing to the limitations of a human vessel, feeling every minute his hands and his face have been exposed to sub-zero temperatures, his clothes wet with snow, clinging to his body that is only now realising just how long it's been cold. How long it's been dying.

"You're not going to die," Dean tells Cas. "You're fucking not. Now tell Sam."

He feels Cas draw himself together, pressing against the edges of this vessel, forcing himself to call out, "Sam," and "Burn her."

It's not subtle, but they don't have time for anything more complicated, and it works better than Dean could have hoped because the snow bitch draws back, understanding what they were planning to do. She takes her hands off Cas, letting him fall to the snow, and Cas gives himself all of three breaths before he's pushing himself to his feet again.

The snow creature is looking around, maybe for her ghosts, but Sam's managed to get rid of them and Dean isn't sure if the pride he feels is his own or Cas's. She looks at Cas, then at Sam behind him. With that creepy vision of his that can see in any direction, Cas knows that Sam has found the can of lighter fluid and the lighter.

Those seconds of hesitation are all Sam needs and he launches himself forward, tearing off the bottle cap and throwing the entire thing at her.

Liquid spills down her gnarled, many-layered body as the bottle hits her shoulder. It falls to the ground, into the snow. For a second Dean panics that the damp will prevent the accelerant from burning, or the lighter from lighting, but then Sam flicks it open and there is flame.

Cas doesn't wait for Sam to throw it, not trusting the lighter to stay alight. Instead, he lifts his hand, reaches out some of his remaining power, calling to the fire, commanding it towards the snow-witch. Dean hears the hiss of it - its language - and the fire obeys.

At the first touch of flame to liquid the witch screams, a high wail like the howling winds of a storm. She tries to conjure more snow, more snow, trying to dampen the flame, but the fire has enveloped her and beneath her ice and her magic she still has flesh and bone to burn.

Snow and ice build around her as she gets more and more desperate, and it's turning into a whirlwind. She calls all the names of the wind and the cold in all the languages of the world; her allies.

Cas looks to Sam, and Sam looks right back. They don't need to say anything to each other, both knowing they have to get away, and get away fast. They move together, holding each other up, Sam throwing his pack quickly over his shoulders, the winds clawing at them; trying to draw them back. The witch is enveloped in her own storm, hidden at its centre.

Sam fumbles to pick up his shotgun where he must have dropped it as they pass. It's been lying in the snow and Dean can see the ice along its barrels.

"How far?" Sam asks as they struggle through snowdrifts and gasp for air. Up. Always headed up.

Cas wishes Sam hadn't asked.

He lies, "An hour. Maybe two."

***

Three hours later the mountain has turned steep and one hell of a lot more treacherous. And Sam is cursing Cas and calling him a lying asshole and a _bastard_.

"I bet Dean put you up to this." Which is totally unfair, because Dean had nothing to do with it. There's a faint sense of amusement from Cas, and even if everything has gone to hell, it's good to know that Cas still has enough strength to laugh at Dean. Kind of.

Sam is smiling faintly, too, even though every step he takes is a long, painful dragging of legs. Sam's face, half hidden by the collar of his coat, is white as the snow around them.

Dean can see every way the cold and the climb hurts Cas, too. He's not shivering anymore, his thoughts have turned disordered and random, his heart rate way too fast. At least he finally agreed to put on Dean's jacket over his trench coat, and put on Dean's gloves and hat. He looks ridiculous, in a cute kind of way, but Dean knows Cas is warmer in them.

"I am not cute," Cas tells him, angry, but more at himself for his weakness than at Dean. And fuck but Dean knows that feeling.

Cas rubs his thumb and forefinger together, and Dean understands that Cas is trying to figure out the feel of wool against skin, the way it slides and cushions. The clothes are heavy across his shoulders, and the pack is uncomfortable under Cas's arms.

"Clothes, huh." Dean tries for casual, trying to distract Cas from the aching cold, and his burning muscles, and the heavy weight of Sam against his side, leaning on him. "They're pretty weird."

"Yes," Cas agrees. "But I have come to understand their worth."

With his one free hand he pulls the hat down, trying to get it to cover his neck, like he's proving a point.

The storm has let up a little, not so much a blizzard now as a lazy falling of light snow. It helps, but the sun has fully set now and it's like any heat there ever was has gone from the world, leaving behind only vast fields of ice.

"She needs time to recover," Cas tells both Dean and Sam. "Then the storm will return."

"How long?" Sam asks. He knows as well as Dean and Cas that he won't be able to keep up this pace for much longer.

Cas replies, "Several hours."

"And you're not lying this time?" Sam says pointedly.

"I'm not."

Cas is watching Sam closely, gripping him around the waist tightly. Worried, Dean realises.

He can read that Sam has gone from being cold as fuck to being borderline hypothermic in the last three hours, and Cas's attempts at warming him are having less and less effect.

Sam stumbles, his knees giving out suddenly, and his weight takes Cas with him to the ground.

There's nothing left, Cas thinks. He can't go further than this. "You must rest," Cas tells Sam.

"I'm okay," Sam insists, except where he's not moving, and his entire weight is leaning against Cas. "We can't stop," Sam says.

"We must and we can."

This high up the mountainside is rockier, making it difficult to navigate safely where boulders and uneven ground are hidden by several feet of thick snow. The path Cas is following is completely obscured, but Dean can see the worn lines of it with Cas's eyes, like a map overlaying the image. He can see where hundreds of feet have walked before, infinitesimally wearing down stone, weaving around the mountain. The image is weaker now, as Cas grows more tired. Since the witch took more of Cas, the sound of his brothers in his head have quieted to whispers.

"It's enough," Cas says. "I have enough." Because it has to be.

There are coves there, weathered away into steeper slopes, and it's to one of these that Cas heads.

"Come on, Cas," Dean encourages. "It's not far."

He doesn’t know how much it will help them to rest when the exertion is probably one of the only things keeping them warm anymore, but Cas has some ideas to heat water for them to drink, and to direct more warmth into Sam.

It's a difficult thing to say, because he wants Sam not to have to suffer like this - it fucking burns to see him suffer like this - but Dean has to be practical. "Conserve your energy for yourself," he tells Cas. "Or you won't be able to carry Sam out of here."

Or defeat the snow-witch. Or put Dean back in his body. Or any of those other things that Dean's been avoiding thinking about.

Cas says, "We will think of something," and still manages to sound weirdly confident about that, even when Dean isn't so sure anymore. "We always do," Cas reminds him.

It's true enough, the number of times they've beaten the odds. The number of times they've come out alive when there's no way it should've been possible.

Dean just wishes, more than anything, he could _do_ something.

"You're talking to me," Cas says. "That's enough."

And Dean sees the memory, that he doesn't think Cas means to show him, of the silence in his head when he was cut off from Heaven and how he longed to hear voices, wanted to talk, but didn't know how with human words and human lips.

Dean can't stop the way he feels regret, and guilt - always the guilt - and tells Cas, "I'm sorry."

"You have nothing to apologise for," Cas says.

He hefts Sam up further across his shoulders, pulls him and drags him to the overhang that even Dean can see isn't going to do much to shelter them. There's a space, right up against the stone at the back, where they can sit on rock rather than snow though, which is about the only snow-less thing Dean's seen in two days. Sam grunts, shifting like he's trying to get his feet under him but not succeeding at all.

"I'll tell Sam to lay off the burgers," Dean tells Cas as he bends down to duck into the cove space. It takes a lot of maneuvering, maybe more than it's worth, but finally they're both seated, huddled close again. They're mostly protected from the wind, and Cas thinks it’s a relief to be out of the incessant falling of snow.

Cas gathers Sam close so that he's lying on his lap with his arms around Cas's waist and his legs drawn up to Cas's side. He warms Sam's blood and Sam's breath with as much strength as he can give and Sam sighs.

"We will stay for an hour," Cas tells him quietly, and Sam nods and closes his eyes.

Cas thinks, fondly, that Sam looks a lot like a child.

"Is that how you see us?" Dean asks. "As kids?"

"The analogy certainly fits you both very well," Cas considers. "Demanding. Unruly. Loud."

"Yeah, okay. I get it."

He feels the warmth of amusement again, and Dean wonders at all the things that Cas feels that never show on his face.

"It's not my face," Cas reminds him.

"Would it show on your real face then?" Dean asks dryly.

Castiel thinks of himself, and Dean sees wings that are arched and black and filled with sparks of light. His form is long, human and inhuman all at once, wrapped in what Dean (what Cas) knows is armour, but it looks like nothing Dean's ever seen before. He can't wrap his mind around it, can't shape it into something comprehensible, and he doesn't need to because Cas is as familiar with this form as he is with Jimmy's. More so.

There is no hair or eyes or ears but there are all of these things and they show everything. Every emotion and every thought is written across what is and isn't Cas's face for anyone to see. It's weird and it's terrifying and it's kind of awesome.

"Angels have no secrets," Cas says.

Dean scoffs, "Except when they do."

There is doubt there, deep, embedded like scratches in flesh, and even now Dean knows there are things in Cas that he's not letting Dean see. Trying not to let Dean see, anyway. He's losing control, and it's getting easier for Dean to peel away Cas's apprehension. To see anything he wants.

"If I asked you," Cas says. "Would you stop trying to look?"

He wants to see it all. He wants to know everything about Cas, for reasons Dean's not quite sure he completely gets. And Dean knows, if he survives, he'll almost certainly never get this chance again. But all the time that Dean's been in Cas's head, Dean can tell that Cas has only ever tried to keep him separate, at a distance, allowing Dean what privacy you can in someone else's brain. He's a friend, and he's done everything he can to keep Dean and Sam safe and alive, here and in the past. You don't fuck around with that kind of loyalty. With that kind of trust.

"Yeah," Dean answers. "Yeah, I would."

Cas doesn't ask, but Dean gets a very strong feeling of relief and contentment, and Cas is so tired and worn that Dean doesn't say anything else.

***

Cas rests, for a while, in that blank weirdness Dean recognises from the shack. It's calming, and like this Dean can hardly feel the pain and the exhaustion and the direness of their situation at all.

Then Cas starts thinking. It's unclear at first. Random things like how Raphael was always unkind to the younger angels, and how he doesn't like the way his (Jimmy's) shoes pinch. He thinks of snow, and how he always thought it was beautiful, before. Cas remembers watching it fall in the Himalayas and in the Hebrides. He was removed from it then, didn't know how it melted on skin and seeped into clothing, sticking uncomfortably to the body, wet and cold. Cas thinks of how he hates the snow now, and how he's going to tell all his brothers, and his Father if he ever sees him, how crappy snow is. He's going to make sure it never falls again. He's going to read the books in the warm, dry libraries of Heaven and he's going to find out how. He's thinking and his eyes are heavy and Castiel almost remembers what it feels like to not feel frozen.

Dean doesn't like this at all.

"Cas," he insists. From the way Cas's thoughts slide away, half-finished and incoherent, Dean thinks Cas must be falling asleep.

"Fuck," Dean swears. "Cas. Wake up!"

"Not asleep," comes his reply, hazy. Meaning is slipping away from Cas, too.

"You are. Come on. Maybe this wasn't such a great idea." It hasn't been an hour yet, but Dean's thinking they should get moving. Cas's unfocused thoughts and sight and hearing can't be a good sign.

Three days, forty-nine minutes, seventeen years and a full moon, Cas thinks.

"Seriously, Cas. You have to wake up," Dean urges. Cas's human eyes close, and the sight of his other eyes dims.

Dean tries to shout, to pull at Cas's consciousness, but he has no hands and he doesn't know how.

In Cas's confused thoughts, Dean sees memory and future and present so mixed together that he can't tell which is which. The angel is withdrawing into himself, hiding himself away, seeking quiet and rest and Dean wishes he could let him. Dean knows how badly Cas deserves it; how it's all Cas ever wants and is the one thing he never gets. But if Dean gives in, he's fairly certain none of them will get out of this alive.

In answer, Dean sees a future (the present) where Cas lies in this hollow for a thousand years, covered over with layers of snow, frozen and hidden but never quite dead. His brothers never come looking for him.

Cas thinks, sadly, "They would be glad for my disappearance," and retreats further into himself.

"Dicks", Dean thinks viciously. "The whole fucking lot of them."

He gets no response. Cas is too far gone. Around him, Cas's body curls up around Sam, muscles relaxing as numbness sets in.

"You're not giving up," Dean tells him. "You're not. I'm not gonna freaking let you."

With Cas more or less incognisant there's nothing separating Dean from him. Nothing stopping him knowing everything that Cas knows. He thinks, maybe now, there's something he can do.

He would start slowly, tentatively, if he had the time. Stretch out carefully, to learn Cas's joints and his muscles. But Dean's used up all his patience, and Dean knows (because Cas knows, even now) they don't have long before the snow-witch is strong again and sends a storm to them. Comes to get them. She'll take Cas (Dean sees, in another future, where she drinks from him and drinks from him and becomes so powerful she covers all of Colorado with her snow, and the cold and ice creeps its way further and further out until the entire country is like some post-apocalyptic disaster movie. None of the other angels do anything to stop it.). She'll kill Sam. There's no way Dean's letting that happen.

So he pushes out, presses himself into Cas, mixing himself and Cas together until Cas's limbs are his limbs and Cas's eyes are his eyes. Dean knows the weight of wings and the sound of the Earth and the joy of Creation. Cas feels, God Cas _feels_ so much, for everything, and all he's ever wanted is to serve and to have certainty again. And all he gets is to rule Heaven, and to deal with petty, vicious, spiteful angels. To fight, and to barely remember what he's fighting for, except sometimes when he sees Dean and Sam.

Dean sees himself in Cas's eyes, human and fallible, stubborn and irritating, honourable, good. He sees the darkness in Dean and Cas still believes, in that weird, creepy-dedicated angel way of his, that Dean is righteous.

"Awesome," Dean's mind supplies. Cas thinks he's awesome.

He thinks the same about Cas, most days anyway, and that thought at least gets a response from Cas, like an uncurling of awareness.

Dean stretches out, feeling resistance and exhaustion and aching stiffness, but pushes past it, moving Cas's fingers. The fabric of the glove lining is soft against them. He feels the length of Cas's arm that's - fuck - so fucking cold, and lifts it in one fluid movement. It's easier than it should be, like lifting his own arm. He knows how to do it. He's done it thousands of times. This is no different.

Dean (Cas) sits up, opens his eyes and sees the snow encroaching into their cove.

It's time they left, and Cas (Dean) knows the way.

Dean can hear Cas more clearly now, thinking, "Dean, you-" and "Shouldn't be-". They're half-formed, like someone on the edge of sleep, but Dean can still get the meaning; _The hell do you think you're doing?_

"Saving your ass," Dean retorts.

He wraps Cas's arms more tightly around Sam, shaking him, and is relieved as fuck when Sam's eyes flicker open.

"Going?" he slurs, which Dean is less pleased about but he'll take what he can get. Sam seems to know what's going on, at least.

Dean manages a nod, not convinced he can talk when Cas doesn't actually think in English.

Sam makes a noise that's probably agreement, and Dean starts to help him up, Cas getting louder in his (their) head.

"This is dangerous," he warns. "We're too close."

"Kinda late for that now." Dean's trying to lift Sam, but he's a heavy bastard and Cas's whole body feels agony from the strain. "You want your body back, you take it. Until then I'm getting us all out of here."

"It's not-" Cas starts, and Dean sees the rest of the thought anyway; "about this body. It's that I want you separate. I want you to stay as Dean, and not become just a part of Castiel."

"I won't," Dean promises, and Cas believes him.

Mostly alert now, Dean can feel Cas regaining control, helping Dean pull Sam out into the snow. Still falling. Still dark and cold.

They hold each other up, they hold Sam up, and they start back along the path that Cas can see with his angel-vision, towards the snow-witch. Away from the snow-witch. Who the fuck knows what.

***

The cavern is something that shouldn't exist. Not in Summer, and not on a steep mountainside in Colorado, but here it is, grand as any cathedral Dean's seen on TV. (Cas has seen them in reality, and he thinks they're strange places, and he doesn't know what to think about the human conceptions of angels that adorn the walls and the ceilings. Except maybe that he's never seen an angel with eyes in its wings). Or, maybe, it's more like the cave of a monster in a horror movie, filled with dark corners and sharpened ice. There's very little light and Dean is glad for Cas's eyes. Close beside him (them) Sam is tense, like he's expecting something to attack at any second and Dean remembers that he probably can't see very much.

"There is nothing living here beside the witch," Cas tells Sam, voice pitched low, but still the sound echoes.

Sam whispers, "What about ghosts?"

Dean (Cas) can't see them as clearly as he could before, can't see their lives and their deaths and their loathing of all things living. But he can sense their presence, can see their incorporeal forms where they linger by their corpses. There are a lot more dead here than the twelve people reported missing back in town. Dean guesses they were just left where they fell when the witch had finished with them. Their frozen corpses lay scattered randomly, some half-buried in ice and snow, white eyes wide and sightless.

"They won't interfere," Cas assures Sam.

Crouched low at the back of the ice cavern the snow-witch is still weakened from the fire. She's lost her control over the ghosts and now they just watch and wait. It's almost warmer in the cave than outside, and Dean can hear the sound of dripping water from somewhere ahead of them. She's concentrating more on healing herself than on maintaining her grip on the world around her.

Cas can see her clawing at her own snow, bathing herself in it, trying to cool the burns marring her skin. She's in pain and Dean is viciously glad for it. For what the bitch had done to Cas and to Sam, and to the people buried here.

"And to you," Cas thinks.

They're lucky. If she were at her full strength they'd already be dead.

Dean takes most of Cas's physical control and a whole lot of Sam's weight, following a path around the bodies and the stalagmites. He steers clear of the blank patches in Cas's angel-sight. To human eyes they look like sigils painted in blood, bright red against the blue-white surface of ice.

Cas concentrates on gathering himself, ideas and tactics and strategies and plans running through his mind. He catches Cas dismissing fire because they've lost the lighter, dismisses making deals and bargains, because what she wants she would just take.

Dean thinks, as he hauls Sam forward, that the cavern is deeper than he'd thought. Or maybe he just hadn't worked out how Cas understood depth yet. Time and place are concepts where Dean has noticed Cas's perception is really freaking weird. Cas is pleased.

Still filtering and running scenarios and drawing up his Grace to its fullest, Cas tells Dean, "If you begin to think as an angel, that is when you have become me too much."

Dean doesn't want to distract him, but he can't help throwing back, "What about you becoming me?"

He doesn't get a reply, but Dean imagines that Cas is raising his eyebrows in disbelief.

In her pain and rage the snow-witch hasn't noticed them yet, maybe thinking they're too weak and human to make it this far. Maybe she thinks she's safe in her lair of ice and stone. But then, an ear-splitting shriek pierces the quiet and Dean (Cas) knows she's sensed their presence.

No backing out now.

Instantly, the temperature in the cavern drops and Cas (Dean) shivers. Sam sucks in a breath, but he knows what's coming and straightens up.

He has the shotgun in his hands, and Cas warms it one last time, and warms Sam so that he can move more easily.

"Your weapon will slow her down," Cas says, and Dean releases his hold on Sam, letting his brother lean his weight against them. 

They drop their packs and Cas draws out Dean's knife. Dean can see where this is going again before Cas has even let Dean see the thought.

"Cas." Dean's seen Cas bleed more than enough to last an angel's lifetime. They need Cas strong, because Dean knows this fight is pretty much down to him. When it comes to it, Cas has to overpower the snow bitch and he's not going to do it bleeding from the wrists.

"For this," Cas says, and Dean knows he's hiding something. "For this I require very little."

He presses the heel of his thumb to the sharp edge, and Dean feels the sharp sting of it, the blood welling up. Cas slides his thumb over the blade, coating it, and under his breath he recites words that mean, "Maim the bitch." This time, Cas doesn't protest at his interpretation.

"Why didn't you do this before?" Dean asks. "When she attacked you and Sam."

"There was no time."

And the bitch, Dean remembers, had held Cas's head in her decaying hands.

They keep moving forward, slowly. The cavern is tapering down around them, closing in on them. There's more ice than snow here, and rock walls. It should be darker than it is, but light is spilling out from some unknown source deeper into the recesses of the cave. It's still too dark for Sam to be able to see to take any kind of aim. "She burns cold," Cas explains to both Dean and Sam. "It will be light enough."

Sam nods.

Looking at Sam, Dean's not sure it'll make much difference with the way his brother's hands are shaking. Sam's squinting against the glare of the first light he's seen in hours, even though Dean can tell it's only dim. He's biting his lip, concentrating on trying to keep his hands still. He can barely stand up on his own, and he's still way too cold, even with all of Cas's help. But he's Sam, and he's strong and he'll keep on his feet and he'll fight because he has no other choice. Because he'll protect Dean and he'll protect Cas.

Dean isn't sure if this is his or Cas's thought.

"You said we can't kill her," Dean thinks. They're getting close now, still approaching cautiously. Cas is wary of traps and tricks. They can see her more clearly, and where she was just an idea of presence she is now bright, cold rage, coalescing into the image of a creature half-rotten and half-burned. She pulls herself up to standing on bone-legs held together with muscle of ice and the stolen lives of humans. Her shrieks have turned to hissing breaths, drawn from lungs filled with pools of winter chill through blue-black lips.

"No," Cas agrees. He looks up, inspecting the rock above them. It's only a couple feet above them and from what Cas can tell there's a lot of it.

The snow-witch is waiting for them, and Cas was right. She gives off her own light. It's like the moon's reflection off snow.

"To lure victims," Cas tells him.

Against Cas's (Dean's) side, Sam pushes himself away, standing on his own two feet. He stumbles but keeps upright.

"You okay?" Dean asks, and Sam glances at him (them), raising his eyebrows.

"Yeah. You sound like Dean."

"This is-" Dean begins, forgetting that, oh yeah, he's not actually Dean right now.

"You are Dean," Cas tells him firmly.

Like Dean didn't know that.

"We're sharing." Dean says.

Dean can't think of a better way to explain it, and whatever he says Sam's going to purposely take it the wrong way anyway.

There it is; Sam's smirk. Even in the half-light, in a creepy-ass cave filled with the frozen corpses and a creature that's more skeleton than skin, Sam can't resist a dig at him. "Right," he drawls. He never looks away from the witch. "Sharing."

Dean hopes they get out of this alive so that Sam might actually get to just _try_ teasing him about this.

"We will." Cas sounds sure, the strength and resolve of his belief a foreign thing to Dean.

Around the witch, Cas is searching for something. It catches Dean off guard when he realises what it is he's looking for. It's too weird to have kind of forgotten that he has his own body. That this isn't his, to share. He's gotten too comfortable in Cas. Too familiar.

"This is why," Cas thinks, "You can't remain here."

Cas finds it discarded on the left side of the cave, close to the wall. Too close to the witch for Dean's liking. It's disturbing to see his own body - corpse-

("Not corpse," Cas cuts in, insistent)

\- body, lying still, pale as snow, flat on his back. His fingers (not Cas's) are curled in on themselves and Dean thinks it'll hurt to stretch them. It'll be cold where Cas is warm (sort of). Empty where Cas is here with him. His body looks so freaking _dead_.

His eyes (not Cas's) are open and empty, but Cas (Dean) knows it (he) is still alive.

"She kept me alive to draw you here," Dean realises. "She doesn't want it - _my_ \- life. She wants yours."

"You know this;" Cas says. "She would have both."

That's not quite what Dean meant, and Cas knows it because _he can read his fucking mind_. Cas, Dean decides, has a lot more control than he'd thought.

"You're still _hiding shit from me_." Dean would fucking yell if he had any kind of lungs of his own. Even now, on the boundaries of what is Castiel, Dean can see the sharp edges where he's keeping things out of view. Futures and plans and thoughts that he doesn't want Dean to see.

"You'll only argue," Cas concedes, and yeah, it's hard to deny it. Cas knows Dean probably would.

They're as close to the witch now as Cas dare go. He raises the knife and Dean relinquishes most of his control to Cas, knowing that this is it. This is when they see if they can gank this bitch. Sam raises the shotgun and his hands shake badly, gloves making him clumsy. He looks determined; every bit the hunter.

"We can trap her," Cas says, and in that second Dean can see what Cas is planning. There's a lot of blood in this future. Cas is advancing now, prowling the extent of her reach, steps cautious and precise over ice and stone. They're committed to this path. Holding Cas back, trying to change his mind or distracting him, would only give the snow-witch an opportunity to finish them off.

Sam circles around towards Dean's body. His feet slip and he looks unsteady, but he's holding his own.

There's a storm of wind and snow growing around the creature, pulling at her loose skin and the rags she wears. She's watching Cas (them) with those cold, glassy eyes. They reflect the cave and all the dead who lie here, and years - _centuries_ \- of hunger and crawling around in the dark, abandoned places of the world. She raises her long, thin arms towards him. Her nails are sharp, flashing like knives. The grin on her face is fixed, half skin and half teeth and a malicious, _hungry_ thing.

For a moment, Cas thinks to try to reason with her; to offer her passage home to the mountains of northern Japan where she has lived for millennia. He thinks perhaps he can offer enough of himself to satisfy her without dying, and Dean is about to protest that no, that is not going to happen so long as either of them is breathing, when suddenly the snow-witch launches herself toward them.

She's fucking fast, and if Dean (Cas) were human, there's no way he would ever be able to keep track of her. Sam fires, but it misses, hitting the opposite cave wall with a deafening crack and before Sam can even turn to see where she's gone, the bitch is slashing across Cas's face with her nails. Cas jumps back, skidding on the ice, but too late as Dean (Cas) feels the sting of the sharp edges biting across his cheek. In his next instant Cas is retaliating, stabbing low into the creature's abdomen where there is more muscle than bone. Cas (Dean) feels the knife slide through soft sinew and his blood on the blade is poison, burning hot inside the witch, spreading through her ice-filled veins, melting them. She screams, and this close the sound is like nails on a chalkboard, making them (him) grit their teeth, wanting to recoil but knowing an opportunity when they see one.

Cas strikes out again, driving the witch back with sharp cutting slashes, the blade catching the bone of her arms, clashing against her nails. They're made of ice, hardened over thousands of years and thickened with the blood of her victims. They should be red, Dean thinks. There should be something left of the dead.

With the witch retreating, Sam fires again and this time hits home, the salt dissolving her skin where it touches. This time she wails, enraged and in pain, and Cas is thinking, "it's working," and, "we need to get her against the back wall," where the cave is most enclosed. He's tiring badly and Dean knows Cas will need a lot of strength to finish this, so Dean takes over.

He gives Sam the time to shoot again. She shies away from them, withdrawing further, weakened by the poison - Cas's blood- creeping through her macabre facsimile of a body.

She's incensed now, desperate, and just as Dean's thinking this makes her more dangerous than ever she lashes out, hissing words that mean, "Kill. Freeze. _Die!_"

Dean (Cas) can feel her magic hit them like the tail-end of an explosion, pushing them back, freezing their hands and their face where skin is exposed to her ice-cold touch. Dean has to grip the knife tightly, his (Cas's) fingers cramping painfully, the wrist stiff, arms locking up. It's difficult to move away, or move at all, and on the other side of the cave Dean sees Sam has been thrown back against the wall, landing on his ass in a heap of long limbs. His shotgun had been knocked out of his hands. He's awake though, looking dazed, his fingers coming away bloody from the back of his head. He's struggling to sit upright, let alone stand up.

"Shit," Dean swears, but Cas stops him moving towards his brother. His _defenseless, half-conscious brother_.

"Draw her attention to us, away from Sam," Cas instructs.

Trusting that Cas knows what he's doing, Dean does as he's told, yelling at the witch and rushing at her with his (Cas's) hand outstretched, knife angled towards the bitch's eyes. She reacts instantly, putting her hands up, trying to rip at them again with her magic. This time, Dean pushes with everything he (Cas) has, ignoring the vicious storm that wraps around her, getting right up into her space. It's so cold. It's too cold. His (Cas's) ears are deafened by the howl of her furious winds. His (Cas's) throat is choked by the thick snow - more like hail now - tearing at the skin of their face. This close, he can smell the rotting and decay, the burned flesh, and in her eyes he can see the joy she takes in pain and slow, lingering death. It makes Dean sick, makes him furious that something like this could exist. Could be allowed to exist. It's an old anger, bone deep and tired from years of hunting shit like this.

Cas offers no explanations or consolation. No justification. Dean is surprised.

Maybe, Dean thinks, angels are just as clueless and lost as humans.

Together, Dean cuts and slashes at the witch's face with Cas's hands and his skill with a knife, taking no notice of the way she claws right back. He manages to catch her eyes and presses deep, feeling a soft sort of resistance before there's something like a pop and the knife slides easily into the socket. She shrieks, this time managing to dislodge Dean with a heavy blow across Cas's face. They're unbalanced and they fall back, landing jarringly on Cas's elbows. Dean tastes Cas's blood in their mouth.

It's enough though. The snow-witch is holding her face with her hands and she's backing away from them, wailing and hissing and cursing in old, dead languages that make Cas flinch.

Her back is against the wall, right where they want her. They need to get this done before she regains her strength. Cas can sense that she's already drawing magic and wind and ice to herself again.

Sam is up, but still holding on to the wall like he won't be able to keep upright without it, and Cas tells Dean, "He's Safe."

"Then do it," Dean urges. "Now."

Cas complies, already forming the sigils he will need in his head and Dean realises something he hadn't known before; that Cas makes those things up as he goes. That this is what Cas is good at, in Heaven. It makes some weird kind of sense.

Stretching out his left hand, palm spread wide, Cas reaches out with his mind and Dean feels the tensile strength of the rocks around them and above them. Cas is looking for faults, pulling on them cautiously, tugging rocks free that will make others fall without causing the stone above their heads to collapse too. It seems to take forever, and Dean has no concept of how long has passed in human terms, but the witch is still crying and shrieking and gathering strength to hurt them so it can't have been long. Cas is shaking with the strain, gritting his teeth as he pulls and pulls. He's exhausted and he's afraid this will kill them all but he doesn't stop.

The first sounds of stone splitting, of rock scraping and shifting against rock, are loud in the cave, and the witch looks up. There's realisation on her face, maybe panic, and she looks back towards Dean (Cas) with blue-black blood running like tears from her eye, and with utter, seething _hatred_.

She tries to scream something out, the beginning of a curse Cas thinks, but her words are cut short by the sudden crushing weight of stone as the roof of the cave collapses on top of her, kicking up dust and cracking ice.

Instinctively, Dean breaks Cas's concentration and curls away, covering his (Cas's) head with his arms. The cold of the ice under them is unwelcome. Cas doesn't give himself (or Dean) even a moment to rest.

"This won't hold her," he says, and Dean knows it. Stone can be weathered away, broken apart by wind and hail and split by ice. The dust hasn't even cleared and already Dean (Cas) can hear the heavy rocks, piled high in front of them, shifting.

Cas is so worn-down and weary that Dean takes control himself, pushing them upright and crossing the distance to the mound of rocks quickly. Somewhere to their left Sam is coughing, but he's alive and Dean can hear scraping sounds where he's trying to stand up. All Cas's concentration is fixed on the witch though, and what he needs to do next.

Dean wants to tell him to stop, but he knows there's no other way and they don't have time to think of anything else. So he lets Cas have control of his arms and watches as Cas brings the knife to his forearm and cuts deep. It hurts, but Cas makes another cut higher up, careful not to slice through tendons. _Christ_, it fucking hurts.

Holding his arm up, Cas angles it so the blood falls to the stones of the mound and Dean (Cas) sees the effect immediately; not thin lines running out from Cas's blood this time but a slow spreading outwards of black, covering over the surface. Behind it Dean (Cas) can't sense anything at all, like Cas is creating a space that doesn't exist. The witch must realise what's happening too because the rocks still untouched by the blackness scrape together more loudly, more urgently as Cas slowly circles the mound, letting his blood run free to form an unbroken line. Cas is speaking, commanding that all things be sealed here, in perpetuity. When the flow from the first cut slows Cas splits open another, and another. The mound is wide, and Dean can tell that Cas is losing too much, bleeding himself too fast. His words are starting to slur together by the time he's half way around. By three quarters of the way Dean takes the weight of his legs, helps him keep walking when all he wants to do is to tell Cas to _stop this_.

When finally, _freaking finally_, Cas returns to where he first spilled blood his (their) vision is getting blurry. It takes almost everything Cas has left to close the circle, biting out the final words of the spell. It binds, cuts off, closes, separates the space from the world. There's a rumbling, trembling of the Earth as the black tar - or blood, or whatever - covering the mound joins together. It's like a sigh of relief and a final cry of rage all at once and then there's just silence.

The presence of the ghosts dissipates, no longer tethered to the witch and the snow.

There's only the cold, and the silence and weariness. Cas's legs give out, Dean no longer able to hold them up.

"She's gone," they think. "She's toast." And they just lie there, breathing and ignoring the cold against their back and Cas's knowledge that the seal could, one say, break.

"But not now," Dean says. "Now we're safe."

Sort of.

They hear Sam shouting, "Cas!" and the sound of his feet running over to them, tripping over rock and slipping on ice. It's still too cold, and Sam is moving clumsily, a lot slower than he'd usually be capable of. Still in danger of falling back into hypothermia.

"Summer will return, now," Cas says, and they can already feel the temperature rising. The snow has stopped falling, the clouds breaking apart. The bitter cold winds are gone. There's still several feet of snow to melt and a two day hike to town for help.

"And you still need your body," Cas adds, just as Sam reaches them.

He swears, "Shit," and grabs at Cas's arm, wrapping his hand around the cuts. It stings like hell and Cas's breath catches in his throat. "Sorry," Sam says. "Sorry. You're still bleeding a lot. Shit. This was your plan? This was a terrible plan."

There's a ripping sound, and then something tight being wrapped around Cas's arm. A bandage, Dean thinks.

"She can't escape," Cas argues, because while it may not have been the most well thought-out of strategies, it had worked. It's concerning, though, how weak Cas sounds. How his vision (all his visions) are slipping away from him again. "Take me to Dean," he says, and Sam, for some reason, nods.

"I'm here," Dean answers automatically, before realising that Cas means to his body. That Cas means to put him back. "You're not strong enough."

Cas disagrees, "I am."

Dean kind of wants to tell Sam to stop hauling Cas's heavy ass across the ice. It's hard work and Sam is really not up to it and for reasons Dean is not going to think about he almost wants to stay here, with Cas. Almost.

But in Cas's head, this is the only way any of them is getting out of this alive.

The idiot angel means to give Dean every last bit of warmth and life he has. "Sam will need assistance," Cas says.

"And you." If he can put Dean back, and Dean's more or less unhurt, Dean's willing to go with this, because neither Cas nor Sam are in any state to get themselves off the mountain. He'll run ahead for help if he has to.

"You can leave me," Cas says, to both Sam and to Dean. "I won't die here." It's true, Dean can see it. That Cas could just hide within this body until the warmth returns, and his body heals, or until Sam and Dean come back for him. It's a lie.

Sam scoffs, "We're not leaving you. No way would Dean ever let that happen."

"Leave you to get picked off by your asshole brothers? No fucking way, Cas." Dean knows he can do this. That he can get them back safe. Cas has carried him for long enough. It's time to return the favour.

As Sam drags Cas to the side of Dean body he looks at himself. At least, as well as he can with Cas's visions blurring at the edges. He's still not wearing a shirt. No hat or gloves or shoes and pale as the dead.

Sam puts his hand on Dean's cheek and grimaces, frowning.

"You sure this is gonna work?" he asks, and yes, Cas is sure.

"It will work," Cas assures him. He reaches out half-blindly, feeling his way from Dean's ice-cold wrist up to his neck where they feel a slow, steady pulse. Alive. Dean feels more than hears Cas telling him, "I told you so."

This has all been so fucking weird, Dean thinks, suddenly realising this is it. It's almost over. Cas's fingers are pressed against the side of Dean's head now, touch light. Cas is relieved.

"You want me out that much?" Dean can't help feeling kind of disappointed at that.

"No," Cas tells him. "I'm relieved we have made it. That I can put things right."

Dean's really not sure what to say or to think or to do, so he just goes with, "Thanks, Cas."

There's no way Cas isn't getting something of the, yeah, fondness Dean has for him. How grateful Dean feels that he's Cas's friend. How glad he is Cas is looking out for him, and for Sam. How much he wants Cas not to do stupid, reckless things like cutting open his wrists and getting himself killed for them. For anyone. Dean wants Cas safe, and he wants him to stick around. And he's really glad he doesn't have to say any of this shit. It makes it so much easier.

"I think the same," Dean hears Cas say, and Dean feels that love of his again, sure and unconditional. It's not just some general, all-encompassing angel-love either. More, a specific, devoted, you annoy the fuck out of me but I like being with you anyway kind of thing.

And as Dean feels himself being pushed away, the lines of himself gently prised from the familiar shape of what he knows to be _Castiel_, back into his own (cold, empty) brain-space, as he feels Cas's presence receding, his thoughts becoming singular - alone - Dean thinks, maybe he doesn't mind this sharing crap so much after all. Maybe he doesn't mind that Cas has seen all of him, and could see all of him whenever he wants. Just so long as Dean gets to see more of Cas, too.

**.End.**


End file.
